Cape Agulhas – Southern Tip of Africa

We have less than a month left in South Africa. We’re leaving in mid April for Holland, but we managed to arrange the airline tickets for a week-long layover in Dubai for no extra cost. So first Dubai, then Holland, then who knows!

But that means it’s time to work through our “Let’s Do This” list. Read: Imake everyone leave the house amid many groans, but once we are doing the activity I gets thanks for making everyone leave the house. It’s our system. I’m only bitter about it sometimes. Usually when I’m hungry.

So we took a 2-hour drive to the Southern Tip of Africa the other day. It was an easy drive on the freeway and through a few charming small towns. We made our way past some really interesting houses that looked out on the water and finally stopped at Cape Agulhas, which is considered the southern most point of Africa. This is also the point, roughly, where the warm waters of the Indian ocean and the cold waters of the Atlantic ocean meet up. Indeed, we stopped at a beach just a kilometer or two east of Cape Agulhas and the water was very nice. Unlike the beaches near our rented house in the Cape Town area, which are freezing and make your feet go numb after a minute or two.

Way down there!

There wasn’t much to see at Cape Agulhas but it was still nice to explore in the tide pools. We took a few pictures with the monument and we tried to envision the waters from the two oceans meeting up. You couldn’t really tell exactly where, but it was fun to think about. We’ve always loved borders.

The girls were very interested in the tide pools. They’ve been taking an online marine zoology class since January and suddenly it all came to life as they scoured the tide pools for anything that looked familiar.

There’s a lighthouse there so we explored that too, including climbing the ladder up to the very top and seeing the gigantic lens used to project the light.

All in all, a day well spent. The family thanked me for making the leave the house. Yep, it’s what I do.

We saw this guy on the way. We laugh when we stumble across wild animals like this: “Oh yeah, we are in Africa!”

This was the pretty beach just east of the tip of Africa. Lots of sand here, not so much at the tip.

This was cool. Never knew that about the compass. We only had a compass on the phone, otherwise we would have liked to test this out. Dan gave an impromptu class on magnetic vs true north poll, the difference between the two is what’s called the magnetic inclination.

Haley is always happy when she’s near naturally moving water.

Marine biology class field trip.

We could have stayed for hours, exploring the tide pools.

Gazing toward Antarctica.

At the museum housed inside the lighthouse we examined the poster with all the marine signal flags. We each picked one that described us. This is Zoe when she’s being fussy about homeschool.

This is Haley, who obsessively cleans everything because she does not want to get the flu.

This is Dan, constantly telling us not to buy stuff that we can’t fit in our suitcases.

Linda, Dan says he’s not a DJ. hahaha! We would love to take requests but our path is a lot more random. And we try to stay in the same general area for awhile until we are ready to move continents. But we will definitely take your request into account! Asia is tentatively planned for the fall, and if it’s an easy jaunt to Australia or New Zealand we’ll definitely add it in. But they aren’t on the itinerary at the moment.